We are preparing to begin our adventures in homeschooling this fall for our six children. Five of them we've adopted through the foster care system and decided that they had too many issues that public schools just were not addressing (our own son wanted to be homeschooled because he didn't want to be left out). Two of the children are particularly problematic and their psychologist suggested that, at best, we need to teach life skills and critical thinking. Conventional homeschooling courses do not seem to really address those two items and we want to build that foundation at the very beginning of their coursework this fall. Any suggestions?

Am I correct that life skills just covers things like telling time, counting money / making change, reading calendars / maps, measuring things, etc.? Seems to me that you don't need a formal course for that - just cover each subject individually and work especially on "head" math by using games such as Cribbage, Muggins, Monopoly, The Farming Game, etc.

As for critical thinking, go to some major news source each morning, choose several news stories, and have your children read them and deliver an opinion on the stories and the major issues involved. They should also be able to defend their opinions on request._________________Homeschool Articles - Events - Support Groups

Critical thinking "class" was every day in my family. When we watched TV, movies, or the news my dad would always ask, "what are they trying to tell us, what do you think about that, what does God think about that?"_________________MINDsprinting * My Blog

Also the website Beestar offers GT Math besides Math and ELA weekly exercises. Every week, kids are challenged with critical thinking and spatial analysis problems in the worksheets they registered for. beestar.org also times the exercise and logs the results for parents to review the answers and monitor their progress at any time. Sign up and math programs are free. Definitely worth a try.

I have a book called Math for The Real World. It focuses on real life skills such as check book, tax forms, budgets, gas mileage and such. this is the stuff that no one taught me. I just learned as i went.

Also the website Beestar offers GT Math besides Math and ELA weekly exercises. Every week, kids are challenged with critical thinking and spatial analysis problems in the worksheets they registered for. beestar.org also times the exercise and logs the results for parents to review the answers and monitor their progress at any time. Sign up and math programs are free. Definitely worth a try.

"We have also been using Beestar for half a year. Emma really likes it. She does the free math practice once a week and we are considering registering other programs for her.

Beestar.org is a great helper for us parents. Emma didn't like math before, but after doing practice of Beestar, she begins to love counting and calculating.

How old are the kids?? If the kids who are in need of life skills training are middle school or older, "life skills" could imply taking a bus/figuring out routes and schedules, basic cooking, basic banking, filling out job applications, job interview role playing, household budgeting, etc...